


The Principle of Displacement

by bmouse



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 11:15:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bmouse/pseuds/bmouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ex-gardener buys some water, and a memory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Principle of Displacement

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the early seasons. Spoilers for Garak's issues and family(and family issues). 'Ketamisine' is a neurotoxin lovingly borrowed from a fic by prairiecrow.

He keeps money from the shop in several places. There's a small tab at Quarks and a not-insignificant percentage gets discreetly wired to a faded white building on Bajor. There's a cache of Latinum behind a panel in the replicator garbage recycler, a bit of self mockery at the Ferengi-like habits of this wasted, unwelcome middle age. Money lies, crouches in wait, yearning to be transferred for bribes, for a small fast ship, for a dose of ketamisine or other emergencies. Chips of high grade-jaedonite nestle cozily and do not click against each other inside his favorite black belt that goes nicely with everything. 

Then there's a small highly-transparent account in the main database on DS9 that Doctor Bashir had, on the occasion of tormenting him with the works of a Ms Austen, once referred to as 'pin money' - frivolous discretionary funds. It's what's keeps him alive. He spends it on water. 

It's amazing really how few conditions for life exist on DS9. There is no soil that wasn't brought aboard and abandoned in an old docking bay as part of chief O’Brien's misplaced efforts to woo his frustrated wife. There is no sunlight. There is no air that hasn't been recycled a hundred thousand times; hasn’t passed, tainted, through the breathing apparatus of every petty smuggler and hypocrite vedek crawling the halls.

There is no water. Not for free anyway, it’s discounted to Starfleet personnel and the Bajoran senior staff who barely use the privilege - free as they are to come and go. He chose his current quarters because they had a tub. When he stands in front of it, the half-filled oval steaming invitingly, he briefly stops despising his claustrophobia and is just exasperated with it. For now he and the affliction have drawn up a non-aggression treaty - as long as his shoulders don't touch both edges of the tub at once he can stay in without losing his breath.

Svelteness was hardly an option for him, given his parents, and he never even had the adolescent fantasy of turning out fashionably tall and thin. After all, there are advantages. He could handily break most people in half and eating all that damnable hesperat is certainly healthy so there’s hardly a chance of replicating Tain's unfortunate decline but this - putting one sturdy foot in after the other and lowering his bulk into the water, is the one time he really wishes there was less of himself.

For an outsider, the circular nature of Cardassian memory is hard to understand. Understanding is made difficult by the fact that no Federation investigator has ever asked the right questions. One of their fanciful, ill-informed physicians might even compare the eidetic recall triggers to symptoms of one of the Human mental illnesses where memory storms uninvited into the present. 

For example when the water closes over his face, hair-crest feathering around his head like a glossy black halo, and only his hands are left floating on the surface a transubstantiation takes place. This current unit of time yields before another, better moment and finds itself consumed. The flesh stays where it is - floating, but the man in the pathetic tub is elsewhere now. 

He remembers. They had taken a trip once, he and his mentor, at a time when they were finally near enough in rank for it to be beyond suspicion. He’d rented a small cabin by a river once polluted into sterility and decades later starkly beautiful with its lack or algae, its limited ecosystem. They were drifting in the current when Tain had laughed and asked "Elim, why do you look so satisfied? You are still young, your hands hold nothing" but his fond regard had been like the a searing ray and he had seen warmth flicker in his black eyes. He had been allowed to see it.

The water had run, in little currents through his open hands like a wealth of crystal threads and he thought   
"Oh father, in this moment my hands hold everything."   
\- - -

In the water the exile’s fingers spasm, his hands clenching and unclenching. 

\- - -

It is an arguably tedious task - shoring up a broken vessel with these little slivers of peace and certainty, but it’s the only self he has and for now he’s decided that it should be cared for. Eventually merciless entropy steals the water’s healing heat, the colors of the memory, but after the tub is drained he finds that he can endure. He is colorless and calm, like the river and for some stretch of time he doesn't feel himself cracking slowly as he moves.


End file.
